Budapest Poet Kindles New Collection

  • 26 Apr 2013 9:00 AM
Budapest Poet Kindles New Collection
Scottish poet, writer, Budapest resident and sometime XpatLoop contributor Paul St John Mackintosh has just released his first collection of poetry, The Golden Age, on Kindle, published by Quills. In fact it's more of a reissue, after 15 years out of print from a small publisher long folded, but the Kindle is not only starting to show its mettle as a platform for serious verse, but also now bringing a highly praised work to a wide audience for the first time.

"This book [The Golden Age] alone strikes me as among the most distinguished by younger British poets known to me," said celebrated critic Michael Hamburger. "Poems which combine formal accomplishment with a lively inventiveness in treating a range of subjects - notably the foreign landscapes which he knows well and renders with accuracy and sympathy", and "singularly skilful and attractive poems - a young poet worth following and worth listening to" said British poets Alan Brownjohn and Kevin Crossley- Holland.

Added poet and critic Stephen Romer, these are "very fine, fully focused, and rhythmically achieved pieces that are a pleasure to read - and also some discursive surprises - there is an undeniable lyric power too - I foresee even more powerful things ahead".

Those things ahead included the poems actually about Hungary in his second volume The Musical Box of Wonders: the poems here are often about Asia. But there is plenty to enjoy, as well as to measure against the author's declared intention to make a poetry ebook that really works.

"I was determined to make this the best ebook I could, " he writes. "I did my best with page breaks and formatting to give the best ereading experience possible for poetry readers. I stuck to Kindle for its superiority in rendering poetry."

Read more on Amazon.com

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